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Inglisch Wiki
Welcome to the Inglisch Wiki Inglisch is a version of English which restores to it its original Anglo-Saxon (and to a lesser degree Old Norse), Germanic character. It is not meant to be a hypothetical model of what English might have been had the Norman Conquest never happened, but does take into account such a scenario in determining the overall direction and characteristics of a modern Germanic English. The nature of Inglisch and its goals Inglisch is distinct from "Anglish" which as of yet has no agreed-upon lexicon, grammar, spelling-system, or method for deriving new compunds from old roots. Perhaps even more disconcertingly there seems to be little consensus among Anglish enthusiasts on phonology. Words are resurrected from Old, Middle, and Early modern or dialectical English (and compunded) with little consistency regarding their stage in the phonological development of the language. The lexicon of Inglisch is in keeping with the phonology of modern English, aka New English, but with a few minor exceptions. Inglisch also avoids the common tendency of Anglish to rather uncritically emulate German (aka New High German) with regards to word-formation and compounding. As a result of this misguided attitude English words are often misapplied, have their semantic field unnecessarily stretched, or their spelling or pronunciation unnaturally contorted in order to superficially resemble their German cognates, whereas English words already exist or have existed which are not only cognate but remain semantically closer to their Frisian and Low German (and it some cases Scandinavian) cognates. It is therefore those languages which are genetically even closer to English than High German, namely the Frisian dialects and Low German, that should be the primary models for a re-germanicized version of modern English, when it comes to word-formation. That being said wherever there exists an English word (at any stage in the history of the language) which happens to be closer to High German than Frisian or Low German in form and meaning, this word will naturally be the preferable choice because of it's native origin. Another misguided tendency which has arisen is to accept recent borrowings from other Germanic languages (particularly High German) in an entirely unaltered form, as Anglish. It is debatable whether such wholesale borrowings should even be considered standard English, let alone Anglish. If the primary motivation behind Anglish is to make a version of English which is even more English ''(not simply more ''Germanic) than today's standard English, such borrowings, being of outlandish origin, cannot be considered Anglish. Inglisch does indeed loan-translate or calque words from other Germanic languages. Sometimes this is an intentional translation of a specific term from another Germanic language, and sometimes it is the natural outcome of loan-translating a technical or scientific term composed of Latin or Greek roots which has been loan translated into other Germanic languages with similar outcomes. (Though practicallly speaking it is often difficult to demonstrate any distinction between these two procedures.) Wherever possible Inglisch uses words of Anglo-Saxon origin (or words of Germanic, eg. Old Norse inspiration which existed in England before 1066. E.g. '' window,'' husband, egg). This includes those words found in Middle English and later stages of English which, although they have no direct antecedents in recorded Old English, nonetheless are made up of roots which did occur in pre-1066 Old English. Later borrowings from Germanic languages such as Middle Low German and Middle Dutch are accepted so long as they are not strikingly foreign or at odds with English phonology (E.g. words with obvious High German phonological traits). It should be mentioned that Scots is treated as a dialect of English insofar as it is also derived from (Northumbrian) Old English (and is considerably truer to its Anglo-Saxon origins than standard English in a number of respects), and is consequently freely mined for vocabulary, on the condition that all borrowings are assimilated to standard New English phonology. The same rule is generally applied to words of Old Norse and Middle Low German derivation. Latest activity Category:Browse